D.C. Gun Control Preventing Terrorism?

Here’s a letter to the editor posted on today’s Washington Post website that offers some much needed counterpoint. Mr. Rories excoriates the paper’s editorial lauding D.C.’s restrictive gun laws for their alleged importance to preventing terrorist attacks in the nation’s capitol. Nothing we haven’t pointed out here at TTAG, but nice to see anyway.

It is ridiculous and dishonest to suggest that loosening gun laws in the District would create some sort of terrorism threat [“Homeland insecurity,” editorial, May 19]. The District’s draconian gun laws have never kept guns out of the hands of the city’s criminal element, only those of its law-abiding citizens. For the decades that these laws have been in effect, firearms have still been readily available to criminals on the black market, reflecting the obvious fact that being unable to legally purchase a gun is no obstacle to people who don’t care about breaking the law in the first place.

So who really believes that terrorists plotting to assassinate government officials are being held back by their inability to legally possess a pistol or rifle in the District? Would these terrorists try to legally register their weapons before carrying out their attack? Are we really to believe that they are rendered toothless by the same restrictions that have never managed to keep guns away from gang members and petty thugs with a few hundred dollars in their pockets?

How unfortunate that a valid debate over the role of Congress in D.C.’s government is being tainted with this sort of irresponsible and unrealistic scaremongering.

comments

One, that the old argument that the law abiding are affected and not the criminals is only partly true. The part that isn't covered is the percentage of crimes committed by people who up until the moment of the crime were law abiding.

And two, that although the District's criminals have always been able to get guns, lax gun laws in their neighborhood would make it all the easier. Things would be worse.

We have reached an untenable equilibrium with our ill considered gun laws. They are not accomplishing what they were intended to do and are widening what has become an urban/rural split in our gunculture.

Clearly there are problems in our cities. Take away all of the guns right now, and all of the problems still exist. These "gun control" laws are a shallow and ineffective approach to their very real troubles. These supporters should stop making believe they are actually doing something.